Monday, May 19, 2003

Well the past several days have been involved with Vinyl tweaking and a breakthrough. After some thought I decided that I wasn't getting enough gain out of my Lehman Black Cube and my medium output (0.8mv) Glider cartridge using the 40db setting on the Cube. I had tried the higher setting once before but got some strange popping noises with my previous preamp. Now with the McCormack MAP-1 I thought I'd give it another go.

What a revelation. The sound is just bursting out all over. The perceived soundstage and signal to noise ratio are greatly enhanced. The only downside is that the greater gain (60db) seems to trigger the ARM circuits of the MAP-1 and produces occasionally pops in the rear channels. The easy solution is just to turn off the amp for the rear channels. I was bit concerned and called McCormack this morning and explained my experience. I was concerned I might be overloading something but they assured me I was not harming anything but were puzzled about the ARM channel pops. They agreed that my solution of turning off the amp was a reasonable approach.

I may investigate a new phono preamp. I'm considering the Monolithic PS-1. I can get a good deal along with the upgraded power supply by trading in my Lehman Black Cube. The advantage to the PS1 is it has four gain settings topping out at 53db gain. I think that a slightly lower gain than the 60db gain of the Cube would be ideal for my Glider.

So far this year has been a banner year of vinyl. I've acquired about 50 LPs of used vinyl at an average of 50 cents a piece. Of course I still have a a lot of original vinyl that I wisely never parted with these past 30 years.